2023-08-09 06:00:03
An exciting discovery has just been unveiled by an international team of paleontologists. A collection of human fossils dating back 300,000 years suggests the existence of a previously unknown human lineage. This discovery, from a site in China, could reveal key information about human evolution, particularly the transition from ancient hominids to modern humans.
Paleontologists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with researchers from several other institutions, studied the fossil remains discovered in Hualongdong, China. These remains included a jawbone, part of the skull (The skull is a bony or cartilaginous structure of the head, characteristic of…) and leg bones of a 300,000-year-old hominid.
The virtually reconstructed HLD 6 skull.
Credit: Wu Liu et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2019).
After carefully examining the jaw, the team noted unique features, such as a triangular lower edge and a distinctive curvature. These elements recall both modern humans and hominids from the end of the Pleistocene (The Pleistocene (from ancient Greek pleistos, numerous, and kainos, recent) is the…). However, the absence of a chin suggests a closer relationship with older species, more resembling Homo erectus (Homo erectus is a fossil representative of the genus Homo that lived in Central Asia and…). This leads the researchers to think that it could be a hybrid (In genetics, the hybrid is the crossing of two individuals of two varieties,…) of man (A man is an individual of male sex adult of the species called Modern Man (Homo…) modern and ancient hominid.
These combined traits had never before been observed in East Asia, indicating that features of modern humans may have appeared 300,000 years ago. Examining the skull, the team also found that the facial bones were more similar to those of modern humans than those of the jaw.
After ruling out the possibility that the remains were those of a Denisovan, the researchers came to the conclusion that the fossils could represent a third line, neither Denisovan nor Homo erectus, but closer to Homo sapiens (Homo sapiens, which means “Wise Man” in Latin, or Modern Man is a…). This species (In the life sciences, the species (from the Latin species, “type”) would most likely have shared certain characteristics with the hominids of the middle or late Pleistocene.
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